What is BBVA City in Madrid
On the outskirts of Madrid, facing the A1 highway, the new BBVA bank headquarters occupies a site surrounded by new construction, commercial buildings and scattered residential developments. The site is located north of the Castellana, the main artery of urban growth that houses the capital's financial center. At the time BBVA purchased the land, this context was compounded by another determining factor, which was that the site was partially occupied by eight structures under construction whose advanced and correct condition called for their incorporation into the development.
The new headquarters concentrates the bank's central offices, including some 6,000 workstations, in an intimate building that abstracts itself from the exterior conditions and creates an interior landscape of gardens and low buildings that extends like a carpet over almost the entire surface of the site and absorbs, as far as possible, the pre-existing constructions. This configuration, similar to that of Arab gardens, gives rise to a friendly city where communications occur horizontally through green spaces on a human scale; the building is divided into small units where it is easier for the worker to feel part of a specific group; and the transparency of the enclosures maximizes the views and the overall feeling of community.
